Mystery CT Slice 7: Another puzzling pilot scan

(What is it and what from? Answers must be in limerick form to count. Pilot scans explained in this post.)

This post is dedicated in memory of the late, great Professor Farish Jenkins, Jr; one of the best anatomists and functional morphologists ever. Excellent retrospectives here and here and here.

Aaaaaand here is the current scoreboard, as promised last time; starting from this post onwards–

RULES: 5 pts for correct, spot-on and FIRST right answer, 4 pts for very close or second, 3 pts for partly right or third in line with right answer, 2 pts for a good try, 1 pt consolation prize for just trying, or for a good joke!

If you post as “anonymous” name then it all goes into the same tomb of the unknown anatomist.

If you change your answer, you lose ~1 pt. Answers posted via Twitter, Facebook, email or whatever do not count! No appeals. I am a frigid dictator. :-)

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21 Responses

First, bird; Second, it’s a big one; Third, terrestrial; Fourth, looks like it could be a ratite of some sort (moa, elephant bird, etc., you get the drift), but also dromornithid or mihirung! It doesn’t look gracile enough to be an anseriform dromornithid or the like, though, which brings me back to ratites. Knowing your fascination and love of elephants, I will guess Aepyornis maximus or a similar by elephant-bird-like species.

I have no little love for bird feet,
but graviportal this one seems, and that’s neat;
not a dromornithid nor dinornithid it seems,
if my guess comes apart at the seams,
my guess for Aepyornis should give me the treat.

I’m gessing that it belongs to a bird, a Moa probably, and by the degree of fusion of the epiphyses I’m gessing that it was a young one (a subadult maybe?) … Sorry John but my english it is not quite enough yet to try a limerick! jejeje!

It’s an Emeus crassus foot bone.
The thing that it used to walk on.
But the Maori ate meat.
and found it’s taste sweet.
So now all the Moas are gone.
(Technically, it’s a tarsometatarsus, but that just didn’t flow as well)

Pretty much everyone got it right that this is a foot, and specifically it is a tarsometatarsus (sole bones; 3 fused metatarsals and some distal tarsals etc.), pertaining to a bird (groans of misery from John Collins!).

The answer of Otis tarda (Kori Bustard) is interesting; I wish I had a scanned/frozen one! I do not, though. And if one looks at pictures of that bird, it has a long, thin tarsometatarsus, or at least moreso than the bone above: http://goo.gl/CmItz (shockingly, I cannot find a good picture of an Otis tarda skeleton online!).

Like filippo mentions, an ostrich is not the answer because it would have only 2 condyles at the end of the bone for the two toes. And an ostrich has a VERY long, thin tarsometatarsus (TMT), as do emus and many other ratites. More groans.

So we’re left with some sort of large, strange, possibly extinct bird. And extinct is the right way to go. But only recently extinct. The abbreviated TMT is also characteristic of a few groups, especially island birds that have for some reasons become less cursorial (long-legged; maybe fast). Some moas, such as Dinornis maximus (one of the more famous ones) have a nice long TMT bone. So this helps us begin to narrow things down; it is not one of those.

And… crass. So now the answer becomes easier. It is Emeus crassus, the Eastern Moa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Moa
Wonky wide feet! And as PaoloV and others note, probably easy prey for hungry original Newzealanders.

Scores are now being updated above. A bonus point for everyone that gave a limerick, and some extra bonus points for particularly good ones. Hooray for the winners, and better luck next time to the others– don’t despair!

Michael Doube (mdoube previously) wins… you clever kiwi, you! He had an advantage of having seen the CT scan data himself, from our recent paper in J Anatomy, but also won because he was quick on the draw!
(paper is here– http://bit.ly/U3oBl2)

Not really fair, was it, being a bit closer to the material than your other readers. But I’ll take the points all the same ;-) History shows I have no clue about some of the other quizzes – I need every point I can get!